After Brian Flores alleged in a lawsuit that the Dolphins offered him $100,000 per loss during the 2019 season, former Browns head coach Hue Jackson suggested something similar happened while he was going 1-31 during his first two seasons on the job.
Jackson tweeted that he could back up an allegation from the executive director of his foundation that he and team executives were paid bonuses for losing. The Browns issued a statement denying that they incentivized anyone to deliberately lose games.
During an appearance on ESPN on Wednesday, Jackson said he was “put in a situation where I could not win” and that the team had a plan that “did not talk about winning and losing until Year 3 and 4” but did not say he was directly incentivized to lose games when Elle Duncan asked him about that aspect of his comments.
“What I was approached by is understanding what the four-year plan was,” Jackson said. “And I think if we understood the mechanics of it, and how it was laid out, I never knew the plan would lead to those things and I didn’t understand it to be very honest. And then once I was in it, and understood everything that was on that plan and how it affected myself and how others were being paid from it, then it made sense to me that this is a team that can’t win, that the first two years, that’s why it doesn’t talk about winning.”
Jackson went on to say that he “wasn’t offered $100,000 for every game, but there was a substantial amount of money made within what happened in this situation every year at the end of it” and said that he received a contract extension after the first two years with Browns owner Jimmy Haslam saying “I feel bad for you” because of what the record would do to Jackson’s reputation as a coach.
Jackson wound up being fired early in his third season and no one watching from the outside would argue that the Browns put together a top-flight roster in 2016 and 2017. That’s a different allegation than paying employees to lose games, however, and Jackson’s clarification takes much of the sting out of his earlier comments.